The present invention relates to liquid cooling devices and especially to cooling towers adapted to cool and aerate large volumes of water.
In the past, various types of liquid cooling towers have been used for heat exchangers for cooling the liquid which has been heated in industrial processes, such as in air conditioning equipment. Such cooling towers typically utilize water which is fed to the top of a tower and allowed to fall through the tower where it may be broken up so as to cool the water by the water/air contact with the ambient air passing through the tower.
A typical prior art cooling tower can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 2,606,008 to Laubach. A more recent cooling system can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,864,442 in which a tower is mounted over a liquid reservoir, and in which a conduit discharges a liquid through a discharge nozzle to provide a downward spray of the cooling water which precipitates into a reservoir. Contra air flow is induced through the cooling water to assist in the cooling, and baffle plates are located in the reservoir to direct the cooling water over conduits of the heat exchanger.
The present invention, on the other hand, sprays a cooling liquid into a cooling tower through a special nonclogging spray nozzle for producing a better atomization of the liquid and utilizes forced air both against the collected liquid and passing through the tower. The tower forms only one part of the cooling system which is mounted on a terraced structure to increase the cooling operation of the liquid as it trickles over the terraced structure along grooves having baffles or retarders and rocks thereon.